Some Lesser Known Facts About Byju Raveendran

Byju Raveendran is an Indian entrepreneur. He created the learning app “Byju’s-The Learning App”, and it is the only startup in Asia which is funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife’s foundation- the “Chan Zuckerberg Initiative”.

Once, in an interview, he said that “Although my parents are teachers, they never pressurised me to perform well at academics. Instead, my father pushed me towards sports”. It resulted in Byju playing six sports at the university level, including Football, Cricket, Table Tennis, and Badminton.

Despite being a sportsperson, Byju never planned to pursue a career in sports. Like most of the students, he only thought of two professions- medical science (Doctor) and engineering. He knew that he would not get any time for sports as a medical student, he chose to become an engineer.

After graduating, he secured a job as a ‘service engineer’ at a multi-national shipping firm.

Once, when he was on a vacation in Bangalore, his friends were preparing for the CAT exam. Since Byju was good at maths, his friends asked him to guide them. Not only did he help his friends, but he also appeared for the exam, just for “fun”. To his surprise, he scored a perfect 100 percentile.

He wanted to ensure that his 100 percentile was not a fluke, hence, he attempted the exam once again and scored 100 percentile. He got a call from all six of the IIM’s, but, he declined all the offers; as he had no interest in doing an MBA.

His friends also cleared the exams with good marks. Thus, his journey of becoming a professional teacher began from the terrace of his friend’s house. He would guide MBA aspirants with tips and tricks to solve mathematics problems in the least time-consuming way. In an interview, he said, “As the number of students grew, the venue of his classes moved from friend’s terrace to a classroom, to an auditorium, and eventually to a stadium.”.

Since he was enjoying teaching, he gave up his job and began teaching. He kept the initial workshops “free of cost:”. He charged money for the advanced workshops only when the students were comfortable with his style of teaching.

He became so popular among students that at one point in time, he was taking maths workshops for around 20,000 students, across different cities, including Delhi, Pune, Mumbai and Chennai.

In 2009, he began recording his lectures to make them available to students across 45 cities.

A few students, who had just passed out of IIM’s, contacted him and proposed the idea of taking Byju’s classes to an all-new domain. Therefore, he, along with his former students, founded a company named “Think and Learn”, which was aimed at creating content for school students. Byju operated on the idea that- “to perform well in competitive exams, students should have complete concept-clarity, which can only be imparted during a person’s schooling”.

By August 2015, Byju’s Android and iOS apps had over 5.5 million downloads with more than 2.5 Lacs annual subscribers.

In September 2016, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organisation created by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, invested $50 million in Byju’s firm, making it the first start-up in India to be funded by the initiative.

The following snapshot sums up Byju’s journey:

In 2017, Byju’s- The Learning App was incorporated by the “Harvard University” as one of its case studies.

On 15 September 2017, Byju Raveendran was featured on the cover of the Forbes India magazine.

Byju Raveendran Featured on the Cover of Forbes India Magazine

In 2019, Byju Raveendran’s net worth grew to $1 Billion.

In July 2019, “Byju’s-The Learning App” became the official sponsor for the Indian Cricket Team Jersey.

On 14 February 2019, he was awarded the Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Ernst & Young.

Byju Raveendran with the Entrepreneur Of The Year Award

As of July 2019, Byju’s-The Learning App has more than 10 million downloads on Android’s Play Store and has more than 35 Lacs annual paid subscribers.